Sandisk’s Stock Is Under Pressure. Here’s the Price I’m Buying!Sandisk CorporationBATS:SNDKKalaGhaziSandisk shares have fallen sharply, which raises an obvious question for investors: is this a buying opportunity, or is the market correctly warning that the company’s extraordinary growth is about to slow? To answer that, it helps to understand what Sandisk does, why its growth has suddenly accelerated, and why the stock still looks cheap despite that acceleration. For years, Sandisk was viewed as a cyclical manufacturer of NAND chips — the flash memory used in SD cards, USB drives, and solid-state drives. Western Digital, which was already a major player in platter-based hard disk drives, acquired Sandisk in 2016 to increase its exposure to SSDs. SSDs were becoming increasingly attractive because they are smaller, faster, more power-efficient, and less vulnerable to physical damage than traditional HDDs. As the data center market grew, Sandisk also introduced ultra-dense enterprise SSDs designed to replace dozens of hardware server racks with far fewer drives. However, when Western Digital spun Sandisk off, the AI market’s expansion had not yet become a massive tailwind for that enterprise SSD business. That changed dramatically. In fiscal 2025, which ended in July 2025, Sandisk’s revenue increased 10%, its adjusted gross margin climbed from 14.8% to 30.3%, and the company returned to profitability on an adjusted basis. Then, in fiscal 2026, the business exploded: revenue surged 176%, adjusted gross margin more than doubled to 71.6%, and adjusted earnings per share skyrocketed 2,271%. That explosive growth was driven almost entirely by AI-related demand for high-density enterprise SSDs, and it pushed Sandisk’s stock to an all-time high in June. The growth question is therefore easy to answer in the near term: Sandisk is growing extremely fast. For fiscal 2027, analysts expect revenue to rise another 145% and adjusted EPS to increase 220%. Despite those estimates, the stock trades at less than four times this year’s adjusted EPS. On the surface, that makes Sandisk look ridiculously undervalued. But the market is not treating Sandisk like a high-growth AI stock. Instead, it is still valuing the company like a cyclical chipmaker. That is the first reason the stock looks so cheap. Analysts expect Sandisk’s growth to decelerate sharply after the current surge: revenue is projected to rise only 22% in fiscal 2028 and less than 1% in fiscal 2029. In other words, investors are looking past the current boom and anticipating a more normal, cyclical pattern. The second reason is political and regulatory uncertainty. The article notes that after Democrats swept the House and Senate during the midterm elections, the AI market could face unpredictable challenges. Several prominent Democrats — including Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa — have called for pausing the construction of new data centers. If such policies gain traction, they could slow one of the main drivers of demand for Sandisk’s high-density enterprise SSDs. The third reason is financing conditions. Rising interest rates are making it harder for AI infrastructure companies to raise fresh capital. That could cool the AI market, and if demand slows while chipmakers continue to expand production, the current chip shortages could quickly turn into supply gluts. In that scenario, memory chip prices could fall, margins could compress, and Sandisk’s earnings could decline. The bulls argue that these headwinds will eventually fade as more companies overcome macroeconomic and regulatory challenges and resume ramping up AI spending. The bears warn that Sandisk — along with other AI memory chipmakers such as Micron and SK Hynix — could fall much further if the AI growth cycle does not last as long as optimists expect. Insider activity also adds to the cautious tone. Over the past three months, Sandisk insiders sold nearly 23 times as many shares as they bought. Over the past 12 months, there were 8.5 times as many sellers as buyers. That chilly insider sentiment suggests the stock may struggle to revisit its all-time highs in the near term. So when would I buy Sandisk? The stock looks shaky right now, but I think the mid-$830s could be a reasonable entry point for long-term investors who can tune out the near-term noise. Sandisk has only a limited trading history, but Micron’s forward price-to-earnings ratio has typically bottomed out at around 3x to 4x during cyclical downturns. That suggests Sandisk’s downside potential may be limited at current levels, even if the AI boom ends abruptly. On the other hand, if the AI boom accelerates, Sandisk’s current growth cycle could last much longer — and the stock could command a higher valuation. In short, Sandisk’s recent growth has been extraordinary: revenue rose 10% in fiscal 2025, surged 176% in fiscal 2026, and is expected to rise 145% in fiscal 2027 before decelerating sharply. The stock looks cheap because the market doubts the durability of that growth. For long-term investors willing to accept that risk, the mid-$830s may be an attractive level to consider.